Guys, follow the link below to read an interesting article about the board game Diplomacy. It’s long, but if you are interested in games design and the origins of NP you should give this a read. I’ve always wanted NP to be “Diplomacy in Space”

Before Risk, before Dungeons & Dragons, before Magic: The Gathering, there was Diplomacy. One writer enters international competition to play the world-conquering game that redefines what it me…

Below are some of the best bits for those of you with short attention spans.

Players would get so angry because other players wouldn’t cooperate with them that they would take to shouting, browbeating, cursing, making insults. Often the anger was directed at players known as “alliance players,” or, more pejoratively, “care bears”: players who refuse to break alliances and will play only for draws.
“People laugh at me, they call me a care bear,” said Thomas Haver, a scientist from Columbus, Ohio. “If you’re a strong alliance player and it’s hard to break your alliances up, they say you’re a care bear.” The game is designed for cooperation, he argues. Every power starts out completely equal; every piece moves exactly the same. “By its very nature you need to cooperate, coordinate with someone else.”
Players like Brian Ecton disagree. “If you don’t play for the solo every time you sit down to play, you ain’t playing the game right.” The vast majority of the players I met at Dixiecon, American and European alike, agreed with Ecton. Alliances are meant to be broken. Draws are shameful. The only glory is in a solo victory, no matter how difficult it is or seldom it happens

“The nature of the game is not for everyone,” said Maletsky. “It’s emotionally brutal at times. In order to succeed you have to work with someone all game, then trick them and lie to them and send their score spiraling down from where they thought it was going to be. And all of those negative consequences come from working with you, and that’s not pleasant.”
On this point, there is little disagreement. “Diplomacy is an incredibly uncomfortable game. Diplomacy is intense and uncomfortable and unsettling. There’s no two ways about it,” said Siobhan Nolen. “The game allows for absurdities in social interaction. You can do whatever you want and there are no consequences.”
Thomas Haver agreed. “If it’s just, ‘Hey, it’s just a game, no hard feelings,’ then it allows them to get away with things that are considered taboo. When people play the game, you get to see their real personality. That’s when they take off the mask.”

And the best bit at the end.

He had never had a solo victory in a game before. He’d had opportunities, sure, but he turned them down in favor of keeping his word to his allies. I don’t want to hurt the other players just to get that win, he had always thought. Additionally, by always being a trustworthy ally who plays honorably, Haver had built up a reputation as someone who was good to work with in tournaments. “That’s why it was easy for people on my board to say, ‘He’s not going to stab his ally.’
“And that’s what allowed me to do it when I did.”
When the moves were read, Brand was crestfallen. Haver stabbed his partner and took enough supply centers from him and the other players to secure 18 units and the elusive solo victory. It was worth 270 points, enough to win him the tournament and the world championship.

Oh, this article is brilliant. As a Diplomacy player from my college days, I can identify. Exactly why I enjoy NP.

That being said, keeping alliances fluid can be very hard emotionally for many players. Not everyone is wired that way. Team games provide an outlet for the cooperative gamers, which is why that effort is so important.

Best memory of Diplomacy I have is one time I managed to be allied with every player for three consecutive turns. I’d guard one person’s centers while telling another I was threatening them while telling a third which centers were open while actually still guarding the original guy’s centers.

This is so much like NP. In 64p games, the best strategy in my opinion is to pick one ally and stick with him. Betray the rest of your allies. This has won me a 64p game and put me in the lead of another.

Growing up we played a little bit of Diplomacy (I had a big family) … but it really is socially unhealthy to play with your family unless you can really, really, really leave the games issues at the game … and (as they say in the article) go out for a beer afterwards.

wfmcgillicuddy is right that NP can be “very hard emotionally” for some and I read/hear about players getting “acrimonious” and carrying grudges in NP2. At the end of the day, it’s just a game … and I always try to remember there is a human person on the other end of the keyboard. Maybe I’ve been lucky and/or oblivious, but the worse (by far) I’ve been called was a recent “lying sack of $&#%” … for (I guess) having to bail in the team game even though I said before the game started that I’d be offline in early June.

The worst I’ve been called is “WAY selfish” when I betrayed my ally at the very end to take the win. I won by one hour, barely beating another ally who should definitely have attacked me. Had he attacked me, he surely would have won.

Well, I’ll admit I’m not hard core enough to enjoy a game where I stab my (long-term) allies at the end. It’s a simple

[joy of victory] + [fun of stabbing a good ally] < 0

However, I have more than once cut down a bunch of enemies with an ally and then left myself a little too vulnerable. My ally couldn’t resist the temptation of solo victory and backstabbed. I then had the glorious job of surviving the backstab, marshalling the surviving former enemies (who are often happy to have a chance to avenge their near destruction, even if they won’t win) and seeing if I can win with righteousness on my side :-). (And I get a lot of good press-releases out of it.)

It’s a lot of fun, and my preferred method of playing. I win a few, I usually manage in the top few placings, and I don’t feel bad for stabbing long time allies. (And no, I don’t mind being backstabbed by an ally, it’s part of the game.)